CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Enough!” roared a voice from what seemed to be very far away. She struggled to her knees and looked around. She heard it again, and this time there was no doubt in her mind who was speaking. Finn, no, she thought frantically, lifting her unbroken arm to touch the amulet still around her neck, as if it could enable him to hear her thoughts. If he kills you, who will look after Eden?
Finn’s voice rang out, filled with passion. “What has become of our people, that you would believe such lies, that you would stand here and watch while this usurper to the throne murders an innocent child?”
Lorcan moved away from Cedar and stood on the edge of the dais. He seemed entirely self-possessed, as if this new interruption were almost expected.
“Is that you, Fionnbharr son of Ruadhan?” he said with a sneer. “Have all the traitors returned? Excellent. Now I can kill you all at once and save myself the trouble of hunting you down. Show yourself, coward!”
Cedar looked out again over the sea of faces. Every head was craned, searching for the subject of Lorcan’s demand. Where could Finn hide? He had to be in his true form in order to speak. She couldn’t see him anywhere, so she started to crawl awkwardly toward Eden, who was still standing immobilized.
“Listen, friends!” Finn was saying. “Your fear has betrayed you! You have believed his lies, because the alternative was certain death.” There was the sound of an explosion and falling marble, and then Cedar heard Finn’s voice coming from another direction.
“But where has this brought you? Tír na nÓg was a land of peace and beauty. Humans are not to blame for its destruction. This is something we have brought upon ourselves through war and violence.”
She reached Eden, ignoring Nuala, who was now standing at the back of the dais and watching everything with wide, frightened eyes. She wrapped her good arm around the girl, and then flinched in shock. Eden’s body was as cold and hard as the marble they were standing on. But her eyes moved and locked with Cedar’s.
“It’s going to be okay, my heart,” Cedar whispered to her. “I love you so much, and I’m going to save you. You’re going to be all right.” She kissed the cold, hard cheek.
She turned her attention back to the cat-and-mouse game between Finn and Lorcan. She could feel a wall of heat radiating from Lorcan. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a huge ball of fire shoot from his hands and into the assembly. He roared with rage and screamed, “Bring him to me!” Cedar realized that Finn must be taking his true form for only long enough to speak. She heard the movement of those gathered below, but no one brought Finn forward. Then she saw him briefly, landing as a tiny bird on the uppermost limb of one of the white birch trees encircling the courtyard. He flew down to a lower branch and transformed back into himself. “None of us are blameless, and yet you allow Lorcan, who has shed the blood of countless of our race, to rule you. You know he is not worthy of that task!”
Cedar could not see what shape he took next, but he disappeared just in time to avoid Lorcan’s sword, which sliced through the tree as if it were made of silk and then returned at once to its enraged owner.
She heard Finn’s voice again, and saw heads in the crowd swivel to search for him. “This child holds the gift of the sidh, and if you allow Lorcan to kill her, his power will be so great it will destroy us all! Now rise up with me!”
Then she could not help but see him, for he was once again the horrifying creature that had terrified her on the Irish beach. He rose from behind the farthest of the marble arches and started advancing toward the throne, a mass of tentacles and fangs and talons. The Danann all backed away from him, and Cedar heard several of them cry out in alarm. Lorcan had dropped his sword and was standing with his feet spread apart and his hands in the air. It was an odd posture, as if he meant to embrace the creature once it drew near. Cedar did not know what it meant, but it filled her with dread, and she knew she had lingered too long.
Finn came at Lorcan, intent on annihilation, and it seemed as though the usurper was going to do nothing to defend himself. The Finn-monster struck him, or seemed to strike him, but from Cedar’s vantage point she could tell that he had only struck the air in front of his target. Then the huge scaled and winged body seemed to puncture and deflate, and Finn lay in his Danann form on the dais.
Cedar screamed. She stared at Finn, who was lying motionless on the ground, his skin mottled with dark purple bruises. She struggled to her feet. Now. She had to act now.
Lorcan was ignoring her and had turned his attention back to his subjects. They had started to swell forward in Finn’s wake, but now they stood still, shocked and silent.
“Oh, yes,” Lorcan said. “I am invulnerable. I wield the true shield of protection, which cannot be penetrated by those with ill intentions. No one in Tír na nÓg or in Ériu can stand against me. Try, if you must. Use all your powers and arts against me, but the price you will pay is your life. If this traitor had been in his true form, the impact would have killed him at once. As it is, I shall finish him off now.” He held out his hand and his sword flew into it.
Cedar cast one last glance back at Eden, but met Nuala’s eyes instead. Nuala had come up beside Eden and was covering the child’s eyes with her hand. Then Cedar turned and ran straight toward Lorcan, focusing all her hatred and fear and anger on him.
The last thing she felt was a burst of pure, white-hot pain. Then, nothing.
Nuala stood as still as the immobilized girl beside her, frozen with shock as she watched the events unfold around her. When Cedar hit Lorcan’s shield, she immediately fell to the ground, unmistakably dead. Her body was red and raw, as though she had been flayed, and her eyes were open and unseeing. Nuala tightened her grip over Eden’s eyes.
Then several things happened at once.
Lorcan lowered his sword, picked up Cedar’s body and lifted it like a trophy into the air.
“Who will defy me next?” he roared, throwing her body back onto the floor in front of his feet like a rag doll. He turned back to Finn, who had managed to get as far as his knees and was groping for Lorcan’s dropped sword. Lorcan kicked the sword away and reached for Finn as if he was going to rip him apart with his bare hands.
And then the mist rose.
It was barely noticeable at first, but Nuala knew what it was. She had seen this scene repeated far too many times over the course of the war. Several people in the crowd cried out, and Lorcan twisted around to see the mist drifting toward him. He looked at Cedar’s body in surprise, and then started backing away from it. But it was too late. The mist surrounded him, disappearing into him like a sponge soaking up water.
He must have been able to feel the change, must have known what was taking place, for even as his body started to wither and shrink, he let out a roar of protest and anger. But his strong voice was now feeble, and before the eyes of those who had feared him above all else, he transformed from an ancient, all-powerful ruler of the Tuatha Dé Danann to a very old human.
Nuala heard the murmurs as the crowd began to understand what had happened. Of course, the great High King Brogan and his noble wife, Kier, could not have bred a human child. This woman who had so valiantly defended her own child against the ruler who had terrified them all, she was Tuatha Dé Danann. Her gift, her ability—it was humanity.
And now it was Lorcan’s.
The shrunken, aged body stood for a moment on legs so pale and thin they shook with the effort. Then Lorcan’s white head was neatly separated from his shoulders by his own sword in Finn’s hands.
Chaos erupted. Nuala felt Eden warm and soften in her arms, and she released her grip on the child, only to wrap her arms around her again and whisper, “I’m sorry, Eden. But your father is here, he really is. He’ll look after you now.” Nuala saw Finn looking around for them. She gave Eden one last embrace, and then ran. When she was beyond the marble arches she turned to see Finn crouching over Cedar, shaking her, picking her up and half-carrying, half-dragging her over to where Eden was running to meet him, screaming for her mother. She saw Finn grab at the girl, say something to her, beg her, and then together, Finn still carrying Cedar’s body, they staggered to one of the marble arches and, after only a second’s hesitation, disappeared. Others tried to follow, only to find themselves on the other side of the arch. Nuala started running and didn’t look back.